


triangle

by followsrabbit



Category: Secret Circle - L. J. Smith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:41:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21764710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/pseuds/followsrabbit
Summary: Diana reached through the moonlit darkness for the chalcedony rose lying on her bedside table. Clutched in her palm. Imagined it in Adam’s palm, then Cassie’s. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel their palms on hers, picture the stone linking them all.
Relationships: Cassie Blake/Adam Conant/Diana Meade
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	triangle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owl_coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owl_coffee/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Thank you for giving me a reason to revisit this wonderful series <3

Contrary to popular belief, Diana was familiar with jealousy.

Oh, she knew what people thought of her—that she was too pure-hearted, too noble, too _good_ for such base emotions. As though she were a paragon, floating above a pedestal, utterly beyond reality. As if being _kind_ meant that she could never be anything else.

Diana was good. Yes. She would give herself that. She was also positive and kind and optimistic and everything that anyone who aspired to pure-heartedness had to be. But she was not perfect. She still—she still _felt_ things.

For instance: mania at Faye’s teasing threats to tempt Adam into infidelity. Mania. That was the only word for it. An absolute mania that hollowed out her stomach and drilled through her head and flushed through her entire body, temples to toes, even though she knew Adam would never. Adam would _never_. Yet just the idea—a _whimper_ of the idea—of Faye’s hands in Adam’s dark red hair, Faye’s teeth in his full lower lip, her chest heaving against his—wrong, wrong, wrong, _wrong_ —was enough to absolutely torture her.

Adam was hers. Even when she hadn’t been able to depend on anyone or anything else—and how _could_ she, when everyone except him was always, always, always depending on her—she had been able to count on him. On that.

So jealousy, by all accounts, should have seared her when Adam and Cassie had confessed their kiss. Their embrace. Their desire for each other. Their… love. Mania. She should have felt manic with the wrongness of not-her-lips on Adam’s lips and not-her-body in Adam’s arms. Because this wasn’t just some taunt of Faye’s. This was real. This had _happened_.

This was Cassie. Sweet, gentle, loyal Cassie who Diana had gravitated towards from first sight. One look at Cassie, and Diana had known they were meant to be friends, no matter how Melanie teased her for ‘adopting a lost puppy.’ Cassie had felt like her friend before they’d known each other at all. As though they’d been meant to meet.

Certain souls were like that, she supposed.

Sitting on her quilted bedspread now, Diana soothed a blend of lavender lemongrass lotion (very calming) onto her bathwater-damp calves. She drew her lower lip between her teeth. _Picture it again_ , a sly voice whispered from some dark corner of her head. It sounded like Faye. _Picture your boyfriend kissing your best friend._

A helpless sound escaped her mouth. Part sigh, part groan, part moan. Too quiet for Cassie, down the hall in the guest room to hear, but still…

Still.

She _could_ picture it, was the thing. Even though she knew she shouldn’t dwell upon the image, that Adam and Cassie were both heartsick with how sorry they were, that they all needed to move on…

_Soulmates. You know they’re soulmates. You know about the silver cord, that they’ll never be able to move on from each other, but you’re letting them try, because you’re selfish and awful and cruel._

Diana shook her head. No. She _wasn’t_. She wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t. She was just giving herself time to… process all of this. Giving them time to forgive themselves.

That was all.

That should have been all.

She shouldn’t have been closing her eyes right now, imagining Adam and Cassie on that bluff again. How soft Cassie’s pale skin must have felt beneath Adam’s slightly callused fingertips. How hesitantly Cassie would have pressed her lips to his—sweet, gentle, a _caress_ —and then how quickly that shyness would have crystallized into need. The pent up desire that would have wrapped Adam’s arms around Cassie like steel bands and the sounds they might have made. A sharp gasp from Cassie into Adam’s mouth. A low moan from Adam into Cassie’s neck. The pair of them so perfectly autumnal—red hair against chestnut waves; pale skin on pale skin; already accepting the loss of their passion, their love, before it could start, like leaves turning carnelian orange just to wither for winter—and so… so…

 _You’re jealous_.

No.

Diana paused. Her hand had traveled beyond her knee to massage her inner thigh, though she’d long run out of lotion.

Refocusing, she dipped her fingers into her tub of lotion again, taking a moment to inhale its blend of floral and citrus. Return to the moment. Re-center.

Just down the hall, Cassie had to be lying in the guest bed—maybe restless with worry over her mother, maybe anguished with grief for her grandmother, but most decidedly not driven distracted by desire.

_Stop._

Diana kept inhaling and exhaling.

_Picture your boyfriend kissing your best friend._

The image kept returning.

_Picture your Adam kissing your Cassie._

And though she _wasn’t_ immune to jealousy, not by any means, it wasn’t precisely jealousy she felt.

* * *

Days passed.

The image didn’t leave.

And Cassie and Adam were both so _wretched_ , she had to do something, but she felt wretched _too_ —

 _A better person would have told them what the silver cord meant immediately_ , she’d agonize as she turned and tossed in bed at night. _You’re selfish. Vindictive. You want to_ punish _them—_

No.

Diana reached through the moonlit darkness for the chalcedony rose lying on her bedside table. Clutched in her palm. Imagined it in Adam’s palm, then Cassie’s. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel their palms on hers, picture the stone linking them all somehow.

A fantasy, of course. It was Adam and Cassie who were linked—Adam and Cassie who shared a silver cord, a soulmate bond, a star-crossed destiny.

She would tell them.

Her boyfriend. Her best friend. Her Adam. Her Cassie.

She would tell them.

But for now Diana curled her fingers tighter around the chalcedony rose that bound them all, and buried her face into her pillow.

* * *

Sometimes, Diana’s dreams were vivid enough to gasp her awake.

Not like Cassie’s. She didn’t think these dreams were born of premonitions or prophecies or precognition or anything so psychic.

No. These dreams were—simpler. Bare skin. Bruised lips. Entwined limbs. Building, boundless pleasure. Everything that everyone seemed to think she was somehow above, as though Faye had a monopoly on lust just because she advertised hers.

Diana had fantasies. Of course she did. They had always featured Adam, always, and they still did, only…

She blushed when she glanced over at Cassie now. Cassie sat on the edge of Diana’s bed, oblivious to the things Diana had dreamed of her doing on this very mattress the very night before. She was nibbling on her lower lip, tucking her light brown hair behind her ear, and examining the flowers on Diana’s comforter.

Diana had dreamt of Cassie’s lips against hers. Her hair in her fingers, then Adam’s. Her body trembling upon this very bedspread…

If she or Laurel or Melanie noticed the color in Diana’s cheeks, they must have charted it off to discomfort over the other night’s revelations. Faye’s sickly sweet voice spinning warped truths. She could see the questioning glances her friends kept chancing at her when they thought her unaware—how could anyone learn that their boyfriend had kissed their friend, and not feel changed?

They weren’t wrong, she supposed. Nor were they precisely right.

Melanie cleared her throat. “How are things with Nick, Cassie?”

Cassie’s head snapped up. Color tinted her cheeks as she shook her hair back into her face.

“Yes,” Laurel was quick to chime in. “How _is_ Nick?”

“Good.” Like so many of her words and gestures and such, Cassie’s answer came softly. “Things are good.”

It was hard to tell whether her pause had been dreamy or distracted or hesitant. No wonder that Diana hadn’t realized Cassie’s feelings for Adam sooner. For how earnest she was, how utterly ruled by her emotions—a Cancer, Diana remembered, Cassie was a Cancer—she knew how to hide her thoughts.

Was Nick allowed to see through that layer of inscrutability? Diana wondered. Did he get to see all of Cassie now, as she once had, before Adam had returned and hidden feelings had tangled their friendship?

Guarded Nick and shy Cassie. It made a sort of sense. Or would have, at least, if not for the silver cord that would always bind Cassie to Adam.

 _But she’s ignoring that silver cord for you_. _Forcing things with Nick for you._

“Everyone always has always thought of Nick as so cold, but…” Laurel grinned. “He’s not cold with you, is he?”

Melanie rolled her eyes. “Don’t pry,” she admonished half-heartedly, though curiosity glinted in her eyes as well.

“He’s wonderful,” was all Cassie said.

And they had all known that already, of course. Nick had always been good. Wonderful. He didn’t deserve this—a girlfriend bound by fate to love someone else. Diana, _knowing_ this but letting it happen.

“He always has been,” Diana agreed, avoiding Melanie’s searching eyes (she knew about the silver cord too, knew that Diana was letting a doomed story play out, knew that this was _wrong_ ), forcing a smile. Ignoring her guilt. Ignoring the other emotion churning in her gut. Not just guilt, but…

The uncomfortable heat that crawled across her skin whenever she saw Cassie’s fingers tangled with Nick’s—wrong—or glimpsed Cassie rising onto her tiptoes to press her lips against Nick’s—wrong—or pictured Cassie sitting on the edge of her bed, wrapping her arms around Nick’s nape, drawing him down closer to her, on top of her… Wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

Cassie blushed.

The conversation drifted.

Diana’s thoughts didn’t.

* * *

_Secrets_ and _Adam_ didn’t fit together in Diana’s mind. They were incompatible puzzle pieces, magnets repelling each other, impossible to push together.

So it was only natural that, studying together on her bed the next night, she withdrew her teeth from her lower lip to confess, “I’ve been thinking about Cassie.”

They weren’t sitting as close together as they usually would. As they had for years. Usually, they’d be touching. Even if it was just their shoulders or their knees or their gazes. Usually, Adam wouldn’t be sitting at the foot of her bed, a good few feet from where she perched by her bed frame.

He’d knocked, too. That in itself wasn’t so unusual—Adam had always upheld exceptional manners—but she’d heard the new note of hesitation in his fist against her door. Shame? Regret? Sheer stress?

Guilt certainly creased Adam’s face when he looked up from his history textbook at her now. Lines enough that she’d wager he spent quite a bit of time thinking about Cassie.

Of course he did. She was his soulmate.

“Diana,” he said, and his voice was breaking and his eyes earnest and it was terrible, “I’m never going to be able to express how sorry I am. Going behind your back, even once. Breaking your trust. _Your_ trust.” A shake of his head swished his red hair. “But don’t blame Cassie. She never… She loves you. We both love you.”

“And I love both of you,” Diana said.

That only seemed to weigh on Adam more—deepening the lines creasing his forehead, sinking the corners of his mouth.

“Diana,” he said. “You can be angry. You don’t have to…”

“I know,” she interrupted. A rarity. Diana almost never interrupted. “I’m not an angel, Adam, no matter what people think. I _could_ be angry.”

Adam knew her too well to hear anything but the truth in her voice. She could see in the tilt of his head, the levelness of his gaze, that he understood she wasn’t angry at all. Not with him. Not with Cassie.

“But,” she said, “anger isn’t what’s undoing me.”

A widening of his eyes. Just as he knew her too well to miss her meaning.

“Adam,” she murmured. “We were both drawn to Cassie from first sight. She was drawn to each of us from first sight.”

“First sight,” he echoed. A foreign concept to their relationship. They’d known each other their whole lives, after all. First sight, for Diana and Adam, preceded memory. And here was a magic to that, she supposed, a constancy that she’d always counted as a blessing.

But there was also something… something _intense_ about the image of Cassie in the old science building, in desperate need of rescue from Faye’s tormenting. A rush of rightness. _You. I’ve been looking for you. I’m supposed to save you._

Diana wondered if Cassie had felt the same when she had first beheld Adam. Wondrous how the world worked. Cassie had saved Adam. Diana had saved Cassie. But who would save the three of them from this heartache? This _yearning_?

Her eyes widened when she looked up at him again. “Don’t you think that means something?”

Adam stayed silent for a moment, as though he weren’t simply considering his words but counting their syllables for hidden meanings. His eyes searched hers for clues.

“I love you,” he settled with.

“Always,” she agreed.

A deep breath.

“But maybe,” she added, “not _only_.”

* * *

That should have changed everything. But there was Black John to deal with, Faye’s apparent defection—Faye wouldn’t _really_ defect, not truly, Diana wouldn’t believe it—to grapple with, Cassie’s mother to worry for.

Too much.

Silver cords could wait.

Even when Cassie broke up with Nick, even when relief flooded through Diana like a wave or a tide or a spell, and even when she saw that wave and tide and spell mirrored in Adam’s dark eyes.

The implications of _not only_ had to wait.

* * *

But eventually—

_“That’s why I was so surprised about Nick, you see. Because I knew you could only love Adam.”_

Diana had to tell Cassie the truth. That the chalcedony rose was meant to be _hers_ , that Adam was fated to be hers, that she could be happy.

And so she did.

And Cassie bit her lip.

And Cassie blinked at her again and again, her mermaid eyes dragging Diana deeper into their blue depths than ever.

Chris was telling Adam to kiss Cassie, and Laurel was slapping Chris, and all Cassie had to do to cement this new normal was walk over to Adam. Claim him. Prove that she wanted him, only him, that the silver cord was as all-encompassing as legend supposed.

Steeling a breath, Diana schooled her features into all the serenity she could muster.

Cassie’s choice. It had to be Cassie’s choice. Cassie had to want—

“But what if I don’t only love Adam?” Cassie murmured, staring at Diana as though she couldn’t look away. “I do. I do love him. But what if I—” she flushed. She paused. She had grown so much over the last several months—wasn't stumbling over her words, wasn't shy, was brave enough to continue. “Diana..."

Brave enough, sure enough, to hold one slender hand out to Diana, the other to Adam.

All at once, the three of them were clasping hands, in a link more tangible than any silver cord.

And, for once, Diana didn’t look simply _serene_ or _kind_ or _pure._ For once, anyone who glanced at her could see how very much she felt at once.

The three of them probably looked silly, clasping hands like this among their friends, were probably making jaws drop and mouths sputter, but that didn't much matter.

Because Diana felt _j_ _ubilant_. Her smile was bursting at its edges and her eyes were beaming and her energy was pulsating with a relentless kind of joy as she clung tighter to her Cassie, her Adam. She felt absolutely jubilant.


End file.
